Review: Bride Wars

Rating:

Despite what Grazia, Cosmopolitan and Glamour magazines say, despite the reviews of Alan 'Four Stars!' Frank, despite what half of women-kind seem to think - wedding comedies are just not very good. Why? Because the target audience of misty-eyed girls who go damp at the sight of diamonds and tiaras are too busy cooing over the fluffy dresses and nice flowers and schmaltzy life lessons to notice the complete absence of anything funny. As any poor sucker with a Y chromosome can testify, 27 Dresses, Licence To Wed, Made Of Honor... bags of shite, one and all.

Here we have the latest in the seemingly endless procession, and it's no different to its forebears - Bride Wars is a soulless, factory-produced dirge, cynically designed to exploit soppy idiots and lonely spinsters without displaying an inch of artistry. Laughs? A trip to your mother's grave would provide more giggles.

Bride Wars hinges on a cat-fight between Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway, a scrap that, in my filthy mind at least, sounds almost tolerable. Best buddies turned 'frenemies' (kill me, kill me now), the former friends turn on one another when both girls' dream weddings are scheduled on the same day: cue a campaign of dirty tricks. Hey, it ain't original, but it's the type of lowbrow comedy premise Kate's mum Goldie used to pull off back in her day. (Is it so wrong for a grown man to love Death Becomes Her? Yes. Yes it is.)

Once it starts, however, you'll realise there's going to be no happy ending to this walk down the aisle. For starters, the so-called 'war' between the girls consists of little more than obnoxious pranks. Blue hair dye? Excessive tanning? What is this, an eight year-old episode of Friends? Jesus girls, would it kill you to slip some laxatives in each other's morning champagne? Seeing Hudson sobbing wretchedly at the altar as diarrhoea dribbles down her leg would have made this film worthwhile. The best Hathaway's sap can manage is ordering her enemy too many chocolates. What a bitch!

So, we've established a lack of spark. There's also a lack of dick. Seriously, there's not a single noticeable male character throughout. Both grooms might as well be pink balloons bobbing around in tuxedos for all the influence they have on the movie's outcome. For all we know, while Hudson and Hathaway are whining their way through their wedding preparations, both 'lucky' men are at home picking their arses and playing Xbox. That's the movie you'd rather be watching; sadly, you're stuck with the fairer, duller sex.

If Kate Hudson is coasting - playing the exact same uppity role she's played a dozen times before, usually opposite Matthew McConaughey - then Anne Hathaway is slumming it: she's far too good for this sort of shit. The rivalry between girls is woefully unbalanced too, while character development is all out of whack: Hudson starts out a controlling bitch and stays that way, while Hathaway starts nice and turns nasty. By the time vows are exchanged, every single character has become thoroughly loathsome.

But damn, girlfriend! Sisters are doing it for themselves, y'all! Women be shopping! And so on. Bride Wars will ensnare the fairer sex like an evil goddamn tractor beam and there's nothing you can do about it. If you must go see it, take a book. Or some cyanide. Just don't tell me I didn't warn you.